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Blog :: The danger of the comfort zone

In this section of our Emmanuel church website we hope to pubiish articles of current interest, thoughts on topical subjects to do with our own Church life as well as thoughts on broader issues of interest to Christians near and far. We welcome feedback (see the end of each article) and hope you find this section helpful.

Along with 10 other people from Emmanuel, I went to New Wine last week - a Christian festival in a huge field in Somerset camping with 8,500 others. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and catching up with friends from my previous two churches, but mainly it was an incredible time of engaging with God in a way I haven’t done in some time. Among the things I felt He spoke to me about during the week, I felt particularly challenged that I had been living in my comfort zone, not stretching myself or doing anything ‘unsafe’, and how that wasn’t what God wanted for me.

It’s so easy to do. We fall into a pattern of eating, sleeping, working, watching TV, etc., and somehow we find that life is passing by and we aren’t achieving anything for the Kingdom. That isn’t what God wants for any of us.

When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone and did something that required you to be brave/selfless/sacrificial? As John Ortberg’s book title says “if you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat”. God wants to stir us up to do something for His glory, and we can’t do that if we stay in our ‘safe place’ where we don’t challenge anything we know is wrong in God’s eyes , or stand up for someone we know needs help. And this is a call to ALL of us, not just the pastor or the prayer warrior or the super-spiritual.

God is looking for people who have a heart for Him, who want to walk away from mundane and mediocre and step up to the next level, to embrace something bigger than themselves, to be courageous and move out of their comfort zones. How many people in the Bible achieved what they did with God by staying within their comfort zone? All through the Bible God called people to do great things with Him, and when they said ‘yes’ (albeit reluctantly quite often!) life as they knew it was changed forever. Don’t you want that for your street, for Northwood, London, the UK? With God we can do incredible things, but we need to give Him our ‘yes’ first.

What could you say ‘yes’ to God to this week? Try stepping out of the safety of your comfort zone and see how He will use you.